Wayne Shorter Quartet, Orchestra Hall, March: A mind-blowing concert by Shorter's telepathic quartet, highlighted by a wild bebop hallucination. After an hour of the saxophonist-composer's beguiling original songs, the band — with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Pattituci and drummer Brian Blade — fell into a stream-of-consciousness medley of bebop tunes, including classics by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and John Coltrane. They NEVER play these tunes, but they did on this night in Detroit.

"Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit," Detroit Institute of Arts, March: The DIA brought together a lot of knockout works in this thoughtful exploration, curated by Mark Rosenthal, of the 11 months that Rivera and Kahlo spent in Detroit 1932-33. Highlights included the massive and rarely exhibited life-size preparatory drawings Rivera made for his "Detroit Industry" murals. Inspired by the miscarriage she suffered in Detroit, Kahlo's "Henry Ford Hospital" captures the artist discovering her intensely personal expressive voice. As the DIA's first major exhibition since the city exited bankruptcy, the show carried the aura of a victory lap for the once-endangered museum.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Hall, April: Led by music director Leonard Slatkin, the DSO's charismatic marriage of music by Maurice Ravel and Alberto Ginastera was the most rewarding kind of connoisseur program — alluring music, most of it rarely heard, thoughtfully chosen to illustrate larger thematic ideas. These two 20th-Century masters shared a gift for brilliant tonal colors, textures, orchestration, rhythm and exotica. A ravishing performance of Ravel's song cycle "Sheherazade" with mezzo-soprano Isabelle Druet was a highlight, as was Ginastera's exuberant and dramatic Piano Concerto No. 1, an unknown masterpiece played by soloist Simon Mulligan.

"Nick Cave: Here Hear," Cranbrook Art Museum, June: Contemporary art is rarely as much fun as Nick Cave's Soundsuits, his hybrid, full-body creations that sit at the intersection of art, fashion, sculpture, assemblage, installation and social critique. Still, Cave's homecoming — he is a Cranbrook alum — reminded you that the eye-candy comes with sharp observations about race and gender, especially notable in a gallery where an affecting suit named for Trayvon Martin was surrounded by sculptures fashioned from racist objects like lawn jockeys found at second-hand shops. Beyond the exhibition itself, Cave took his art directly to the people via a string of dance-based performances in Detroit, linking the suburban Cranbrook museum directly to urban life.

Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, June. The Welsh-born cellist Paul Watkins was everywhere during his inaugural season as artistic director. He appeared as a cellist, pianist, conductor and harpsichordist; he brought important new performers into the fold, and his imaginative programming was filled with contemporary music. A high point was a concert at St. Hugo's, where Stephanie Gonley and Watkins offered a sublime reading of a Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello. Watkins and two colleagues in the Emerson String Quartet also brought striking intensity to the evocative stillness of Andrew Norman's "Sabina," a movement from the young composer's "The Companion Guide to Rome."

Pat Metheny and Ron Carter, Detroit Jazz Festival, September: Stars of different generations, Metheny, 61, the festival's artist-in-residence, and the Detroit-born Carter, 78, teamed up for the first time anywhere for an intimate set of guitar-and-bass duets. With just Carter's bass walking behind him, Metheny's connection to his roots bubbled up from his subconscious with thrilling results. The high point of their communion came on Carter's "Eighty-One," a blues whose presciently funky bass line, airy melody and fleeting gestures opened a window on the infinite and pushed both players into provocative dialogue.

"The Passenger," Detroit Opera House, November: Michigan Opera Theatre's production of composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg and librettist Alexander Medvedev's "The Passenger" made a devastating impact, plunging viewers into the nightmare of the Holocaust and its long shadow. The stark and chilling beauty of Weinberg's music, a brilliant production with an amazing two-tiered set — the barracks of Auschwitz below, the comfort of a cruise ship above — and terrific performances on stage and in the pit created the most powerful night of theater I've had in 20 years of opera-going in Detroit.

Juilliard String Quartet, Schaver Recital Hall, Wayne State University, December: Longtime champions of the American modernist composer Elliott Carter, the Juilliard quartet gave a revelatory performance of his landmark String Quartet No. 1 (1951). The quartet found the expressive soul at the core of the piece, allowing the music's startlingly independent lines to weave a kind of magic spell of conversation that flowed so naturally that the piece felt about half as long as its 40-minute running time.

"Picasso Sculpture," Museum of Modern Art, New York, December: One of the greatest museum shows I've ever seen, MOMA's breathtaking survey of Picasso's sculptures encompasses about 140 mostly A-list works made between 1902 and 1964 in a dizzying array of materials. There's an endless flow of expressive virtuosity and creative imagination on view. Here is the Prometheus of 20th-Century art at the top of his game, constantly reinventing himself and often making damn near everyone else look like a child. Show closes Feb. 7. It's worth the plane ticket.

Street art in Detroit. The explosion of street art in Detroit has been recognized for years, but it reached a new level of visibility in 2015, and several developments helped spark a wider debate about the nature and meaning of the form and the role it's playing in revitalizing Detroit. The famed street artist Shepard Fairey, who completed an 18-story mural at One Campus Martius in May, was later arrested for allegedly doing unauthorized work on private property in Detroit. (The artist goes on trial next month.) Meanwhile, the first Murals in the Market, a nine-day festival, brought more than 45 local, national and international street artists together, resulting in a vibrant makeover of the already art-rich Eastern Market.

One for 2016

Aaron Copland's "The Tender Land" (1954) isn't produced often these days, so here's a rare opportunity to see the composer's only full-length opera. The piece marries a tuneful score saturated in Americana with a story of young love in the rural Midwest and the push-pull tension between family roots and the desire to explore the world. Michigan Opera Theatre, which is presenting the three-act version that Copland completed in 1955, produced the opera once before in 1971 with the composer conducting. March 12-13, Macomb Center for the Performing Arts, Clinton Township; March 19-20, Heinz C. Prechter Educational And Performing Arts Center, Taylor.